In Ottoman history Amasya is remembered above all as the sanjak where princes were trained, yet the city's place in the tradition of the state is not limited to that role. In the winter of 1554-1555 and the spring that followed, this city on the banks of the Yeşilırmak became a diplomatic center where two great powers decided on peace. The Peace of Amasya, the first treaty between the Ottoman State and Safavid Iran, halted a war that had continued intermittently since 1532 and established a peace that would last roughly a quarter of a century. The agreement bears the name of Amasya because Süleyman the Magnificent conducted every stage of the negotiations in this city, at the head of an army that was wintering there. That winter Amasya received more than the Iranian envoy; the Habsburg and French ambassadors also came before the sultan in this city. The letters of the Habsburg ambassador Busbecq and the Amasya Tarihi of Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn open two separate windows onto how these events were lived in the city itself.

Background to the War

The Ottoman-Safavid rivalry had been the central problem of the eastern frontier since the Battle of Chaldiran (1514) in the time of Shah Ismail. Through the Campaign of the Two Iraqs (1533-1535), Süleyman established Ottoman authority over Tabriz and Baghdad, and in 1548-1549 he set out on a second Iranian campaign. The direct cause of that expedition was Elkas Mirza, the brother of Shah Tahmasp, who had rebelled while governing Shirvan and taken refuge with the Ottomans. He convinced Süleyman that if a campaign were launched into Iran, the army and the people would support him. Tahmasp again avoided facing the Ottoman army. Even after Süleyman reached Tabriz in the summer of 1548, the frontier could not be drawn decisively. Once the Ottoman army withdrew, the Safavids retook Shirvan at the beginning of 1550 and captured Sheki in 1551.

Seeing that Tabriz lay exposed to Ottoman incursions, Tahmasp moved his capital in 1548 away from the frontier to Qazvin, deep in the interior of Iran. From then on the Safavid response to the Ottoman army hardened into a distinct method. The Safavid army, made up of light cavalry, avoided pitched battle on the plains; along the route the Ottoman army would take it burned the fields, destroyed food stores, and broke down roads and bridges. As soon as the Ottoman forces left a region, Safavid units returned and plundered cities such as Kars, Erzurum, Ahlat and Bayburt. After the campaign of 1548-1549 the view gained ground in the Ottoman government that the Safavids could not be eliminated altogether and that it would be more profitable to hold them back with strong military measures along the frontier. The ground for the peace at Amasya was prepared in this mutual exhaustion.

One of the developments that heightened tension in Eastern Anatolia was a series of raids by İskender Pasha, the beylerbey of Erzurum, against lands still held by the Georgian atabegs. In May 1551 İskender Pasha took Ardanuç and made it the seat of a sanjak. When the Georgian lords appealed to Tahmasp for help, the shah first marched against İskender Pasha, but as winter approached he returned to Karabakh without result. In 1552 he divided his army into four columns and entered Ottoman territory, pressed İskender Pasha hard at Erzurum, laid waste the country around Ahlat and Van, seized Erciş and Muradiye, and continued his devastation in Eastern Anatolia until the spring of 1553. The Ottoman land army was then on the Hungarian front because of the question of Transylvania. The news from the east forced Süleyman to halt that operation and turn the army eastward. The sources present the Safavid raids on the Ottoman frontier and Eastern Anatolia after the Tabriz campaign as the reason Süleyman was compelled to undertake a new Iranian campaign.

The Nakhchivan Campaign

The campaign was originally conceived as the grand vizier's undertaking rather than the sultan's. According to İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Rüstem Pasha set out against Iran in 1553 with the troops of the standing household corps, and on reaching Aksaray he learned from his spies that the Janissaries were preparing to force the sultan into retirement at Dimetoka and proclaim the governor of Amasya, Şehzade Mustafa, as ruler. He went no further; he sent the agha of the sipahis, Şemsi Agha, and the chief of the çavuşes to Istanbul to advise that it would be fitting for the sultan to lead the campaign in person. A Topkapı Palace document cited by Uzunçarşılı goes further, alleging that Rüstem Pasha forged the prince's seal to have a letter of friendship written to Shah Tahmasp proposing an alliance. The allegation shows how closely the death of Şehzade Mustafa and the Iranian question became entangled within the same year.

Süleyman left Istanbul on 28 August 1553. His journey is bound up with the fate of his eldest son, Şehzade Mustafa, the sanjak governor of Amasya. According to Hüsâmeddîn, the prince, eager to win his father's approval, carefully equipped an army of forty thousand men and set out from Amasya at the beginning of Ramadan in the Hijri year 960, leaving his lala Sun'ullah Bey behind as deputy governor; his vizier Ahmed Pasha went with him. Mustafa reached his father near Ereğli in the province of Konya on 4 October, and the next day, when he entered the imperial tent to present himself, he was met by executioners. Süleyman had heard along the way of the reports and propaganda directed against Mustafa; Rüstem Pasha is also said to have sent letters about his son. After the event Rüstem Pasha was dismissed and replaced by Kara Ahmed Pasha. Both Ottoman and Western sources write that over time the sultan came to feel deep regret for this decision. Some poets, among them Taşlıcalı Yahyâ, criticized him harshly for it, and the sultan made no reply. Süleyman reached Aleppo on 8 November. His son Cihangir, whose illness had advanced and who was deeply affected by his elder brother's death, also died there on 27 November 1553. The sultan had lost two sons in quick succession. Even so, rather than return to Istanbul, he chose to march against the Safavids.

The army wintered in Aleppo and set out on 9 April 1554, crossing the bridge at Birecik to Urfa and from there reaching Diyarbakır. The prince's death had caused deep resentment among the Janissaries; according to Uzunçarşılı, before attacking Iran with soldiers who were estranged from him, the sultan held a general audience at Diyarbakır, met the commanders of the corps, and only after obtaining assurances of their loyalty did he begin the operation. The council held at Diyarbakır decided that the troops would assemble at Erzurum. Before Kars Süleyman openly declared war on the Safavids, reached Yerevan on 13 July and had the surrounding country completely devastated. The same was done on 28 July at Nakhchivan, which had been evacuated; some accounts add that Karabakh and Khoy were also plundered during this campaign. Since the aim was to repay the plunder and destruction Tahmasp had inflicted on Eastern Anatolia, no troops were left in these places. Tahmasp, for his part, did not engage in a major battle. He applied a method of passive resistance: burning and destroying the places the Ottoman army would pass, poisoning the water, moving the population away, and leaving not a single blade of green grass. When the army, far from its supply centers, began to suffer from a shortage of food and winter drew near, Nakhchivan was abandoned.

The move toward peace came in two steps. According to some sources, on 6 August 1554 (7 Ramadan 961) the Safavids sent a Turkish captive with a peace offer to the Ottoman camp near Doğubayazıt. The official envoy, Kaçar Şahkulu, then came to Erzurum, where Süleyman was staying, and conveyed Tahmasp's request for a truce; Süleyman accepted it on 26 September 1554. Some accounts state that the meeting took place on the road to Eleşkirt or Doğubayazıt; this discrepancy may stem from a confusion between the first unofficial offer and the official embassy. Under the understanding reached, a truce was agreed that would last until the treaty was concluded.

Süleyman's Winter in Amasya

Because the sultan intended to repeat the Iranian campaign the following year, he returned by way of Erzurum and Sivas to Amasya on 30 October 1554 and waited there to spend the winter. Hüsâmeddîn gives this return in the Hijri calendar: on the third day of Dhu al-Hijjah 961 Süleyman entered the city with his great army and in grand processions, and took up residence in the Beyler Sarayı, the governors' palace. Not the whole army stayed in the city; the Anatolian troops were given leave to rest on the plain of Taşâbâd (present-day Erbaa), and the Rumelian troops in the province of Karaman. His choice of Amasya is noted as carrying an added symbolic meaning, since it had been the sanjak seat of his son Mustafa, whom he had had executed. The city was also a staging and quartering point for the Iranian campaigns; its position in the interior of Anatolia allowed the army to advance quickly in spring by way of Erzurum toward Azerbaijan.

The decision to winter there was a show of strength. In their correspondence the Ottomans had threatened to destroy the Ardabil shrine, the hearth the Safavids held sacred; Süleyman's wintering in Amasya showed that the threat was real. The sultan's waiting in a city near the frontier without dispersing his forces meant that in spring the army would march on Ardabil and Tabriz. Faced with this prospect, Tahmasp grew alarmed and launched an intensive effort of diplomacy to secure peace. Süleyman was also inclined toward peace. That inclination allowed the exchange of letters between the two sides to culminate in a treaty at Amasya.

A City That Had Lost Its Prince

The Amasya in which the sultan wintered was a city that had lost its sanjak governor a year earlier. According to the information Hüsâmeddîn assembled from court registers and manuscript miscellanies, the sanjak of Amasya, left vacant by Mustafa's death, was again attached to the beylerbeylik of Sivas, and the defter emini (keeper of the registers) Ramazanzâde Mehmed Çelebi of Merzifon was appointed its governor. Mehmed Bey, who regarded the appointment as a punishment because he had corresponded with the prince, begged in long letters to be excused, but was obliged to come to Amasya. The kadı of Amasya, Alâeddin Ali Efendi, shaken by the prince's death, asked to retire, and the beylerbey of Sivas, Yahşi Beyzâde Ahmed Pasha, was removed from office because he had sent the prince gifts and letters. The lala Sun'ullah Bey and the nişancı Derviş Ahmed Çelebi were required to reside in Amasya. The prince's young son Süleyman Çelebi was strangled in Amasya and buried in the Şehzadeler Türbesi, the tomb of the princes; the undated sarcophagus inscribed "Süleyman Çelebi bin Mustafa" in that tomb is accepted as his.

Hüsâmeddîn writes that Şeyhzâde Nûh Efendi, one of the Amasya sheikhs the prince had greatly revered, and his brother Sheikh Abdurrahim Efendi grieved deeply over this death and cursed Rüstem Pasha. When Süleyman set out on the Nakhchivan campaign he had invited Nûh Efendi to accompany the army and sent him a thousand gold pieces; the sheikh declined the invitation with an excuse and returned the gold as well. In Hüsâmeddîn's words, because of the prince's killing the sultan had fallen from favor in the eyes of the people, and above all of the scholars and people of Amasya. In Rabi' al-Akhir of the year 961 Mehmed Bey was promoted to chief treasurer of the state, and in his place Kaya Bey, son of Kaya Paşazâde and a member of the Torumtay family, one of the notable houses of Amasya, became sanjak governor. In the winter when Süleyman came to the city, this Amasya-born bey was at the head of the sanjak.

The sultan's conduct in Amasya can be read as a policy aimed at easing this resentment. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Süleyman stayed in the city for more than six months, gratified the scholars and notables of Amasya with gifts and favors, showed great attention to the people, and remitted the city's taxes for one year. He took those attached to the prince under his protection and admitted them to the imperial council. The sanjak governor Kaya Bey, for his part, worked hard to win the sultan's favor and allowed not the slightest complaint or impropriety within the sanjak. A thesis on Şehzade Mustafa likewise relates that in Amasya the sultan gave presents to the scholars around the prince and to the city's notables, and distributed money to keep the soldiers content.

Amasya Through Busbecq's Eyes

The months the sultan spent in Amasya were not taken up by Iranian diplomacy alone. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, ambassador of the Habsburg King Ferdinand, failing to find the sultan in Istanbul, came to Amasya after a thirteen-day journey and, by his own account, reached the city on 7 April 1555. Ferdinand's entry in 1551 into Transylvania, an Ottoman protectorate, had broken the truce between the two states, and Busbecq's task was to calm that tension. The ambassador's letters, later published in Latin and widely read in Europe for a long time, are among the most vivid testimonies we have of that winter in Amasya. The first Latin edition of his first letter had appeared in 1581 under the title Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum, that is, Travels to Constantinople and Amasya.

Busbecq describes Amasya as a city built on the slopes of two facing hills, with the river Iris (the Yeşilırmak) running through the middle. In his view the houses on each bank look upon one another like the tiers of a theater, and what happens on one side can easily be watched from the other. Because of the mountains surrounding the city there is only one road fit for carts to go in and out. He writes that a strong castle on the high hill commanding the city held a permanent garrison, and that the ancient monuments in the rock were perhaps the tombs of the kings of Cappadocia. He did not find the houses and streets beautiful; he notes the mud-brick houses with flat roofs covered in earth, and the old column drums rolled across the roofs to seal the cracks. On the night of their arrival a great fire broke out in the city, and the Janissaries put it out by pulling down the adjoining houses; on this occasion Busbecq complains that the soldiers turned fires into opportunities for plunder. The ambassador adds that this sanjak, regarded as unlucky ever since the time of Bayezid, had confirmed that reputation with Mustafa's pitiful end.

The envoys first met the grand vizier Ahmed Pasha and the other pashas while the sultan was away from the city. After Süleyman returned they were received in audience. Busbecq describes the sultan seated on a low throne about a foot from the ground, covered with carpets and embroidered cushions, his bow and arrows at his side, a stern-faced yet majestic ruler. Each envoy was led into the presence held by the arm by a chamberlain and was then walked out backward. He writes that as the sultan listened, a look of disdain came over his face and he said only "Giusel, giusel," that is, "Well, well." The sanjak governors were present at the audience with their gifts, and sipahis and thousands of Janissaries stood ranged in waiting. What impressed Busbecq most was the stillness of the Janissaries: seeing them from a distance, he could not tell whether they were living men or statues, until, saluting them as custom required, he saw them all bow their heads at once in reply. He praises at length the fact that no one in that crowd stood out by birth and that offices were distributed by merit alone.

The same envoy also records that Süleyman suffered from an incurable sore on his leg (gout). In the English translation of the letter this ailment is described as a gangrene or ulcer in the thigh; Busbecq adds that the sultan was said to put rouge on his cheeks when receiving ambassadors, so as to look healthy and appear formidable to foreign rulers. The sultan would indeed spend most of the last fifteen years of his life with this disease.

The French ambassador also came to Amasya and conveyed the wish of the new king, Henri II, to act jointly at sea against the Spaniards; at the ambassador's request the fleet would set sail against Spain in 1556. Ottoman-French cooperation was not new: after the capture of Tripoli in 1551 the two fleets had prepared joint operations in the Mediterranean, and in 1553 they raided Corsica and seized the island's chief town.

The Envoy's Arrival in Amasya

Shah Tahmasp's chief doorkeeper (eşik ağası), Ferruhzade Bey (Kemaleddin Ferruhzade), reached Amasya with a retinue of more than a hundred people. The date of his arrival is given differently in the sources: the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives 17 May 1555, whereas Busbecq writes that the envoy came on 10 May, and the Encyclopaedia Iranica gives the same date as the equivalent of 18 Jumada al-Akhirah 962. Hüsâmeddîn names the envoy "Ferahzâd Han" and writes that he came before Süleyman in Amasya and pleaded for peace. The envoy discussed peace with the Ottoman viziers and on 22 May was received in the council, where he presented the shah's gifts and his letter asking for peace to Süleyman. In the letter Tahmasp asked that the path of peace remain always open between the two sides, that good relations be established, and that Iranian pilgrims visiting the Kaaba and the other holy places be permitted to pass through Ottoman territory.

It is Busbecq who describes the shah's presents in most detail. Among the gifts the envoy brought were costly hangings and carpets, tents described as Babylonian work, their interiors adorned with all kinds of needlework, splendid horse trappings and saddles, Damascus swords with jewel-studded hilts, and finely wrought shields. According to Busbecq, the gift valued above all the others was a copy of the Qur'an. The ambassador records that the Ottomans quickly came to terms with the Iranians and that, to show that peace had been made, extraordinary honors were paid to the Safavid envoy. This worried the Habsburg delegation, since its own negotiations were going much less smoothly.

One of the banquets given for the envoy is a scene Busbecq watched from his lodging across the river. Ali Pasha, whom he calls the grand vizier's deputy and describes as a Dalmatian, a man of wit and courteous to strangers, entertained the Iranian envoy in his own garden. The table at which the pasha and the envoy sat was covered with a canopy. About a hundred young servants, all dressed alike, formed a line stretching from the kitchen to the table; each dish was passed from hand to hand and reached the table without the slightest noise, and more than a hundred dishes were served in this order. The envoy's retinue sat a little further off, together with Ottoman dignitaries. Busbecq mentions the scene to illustrate the care the Ottomans gave to order even in small matters.

Süleyman received Tahmasp's requests favorably. The letter setting out the terms of the agreement was handed on 1 June 1555 (11 Rajab 962) to the envoy, who had been summoned to the council once more. Ottoman sources and most encyclopedic works give this day as the date of the treaty. Some sources date the same event to 29 May 1555; the Encyclopaedia Iranica gives that date as the equivalent of 8 Rajab 962 and writes that the treaty was signed nineteen days after the envoy's arrival. Whether the difference arises from which stage is taken as the point of reference is unclear.

The Nature and Terms of the Treaty

The Peace of Amasya is not a text signed by both parties with its articles listed one by one. It rests essentially on the letter Süleyman gave the envoy, and that letter sets out the principles of the agreement. Because it was the product of mutual letters of goodwill and of embassy talks, it is also impossible to speak of a definite number of articles. The correspondence is known through Ottoman chronicles and works such as the Münşeâtü's-selâtîn, Feridun Bey's collection of official correspondence. Three basic points emerge from the letters. The first was the prohibition of tabarra, the practice by which extreme Shiites in Iran who recognized only Ali as the legitimate caliph cursed the other three caliphs, the Companions of the Prophet and Aisha, and turned this into a ceremony; it was hoped that the assurance the envoy had given on this matter would be honored. The second was that Ottoman frontier commanders would not move against Iran unless attacked from the other side. The third was that Iranian pilgrims would be allowed to pass through Ottoman territory to visit the holy places. It is written that this guarantee covered Karbala and Najaf as well as Mecca and Medina. The sources also note that Süleyman's letter to Tahmasp laid particular emphasis on religious matters.

Although the agreement did not have the character of a full treaty and appears to consist of little more than the two rulers' mutual expressions of friendship, its political outcome was clear. The Safavids in effect recognized Ottoman sovereignty over Basra, Baghdad, Shahrizor, Van, Bitlis, Erzurum, Kars and the land of the Atabegs. Some studies describe the frontier outcome in more detail. Western Georgia and Western Armenia came under Ottoman control, while Eastern Georgia and Eastern Armenia remained under Safavid rule. The Ottomans kept most of Iraq and Baghdad, and the Safavids retained Tabriz and their lands in the northwest. The same studies also write that this settlement gave the Ottomans access to the Persian Gulf.

Not all accounts of the treaty's content agree. Some textbooks on Safavid history state that Azerbaijan including Tabriz, Western Georgia, Eastern Anatolia and Arab Iraq remained within Ottoman borders. According to the same text, the shah undertook to put an end to the plundering and pillaging of his supporters in Anatolia and to Shiite propaganda, and a clause was added to the treaty providing for the return of those who fled from one country to the other. This account contradicts the studies that say Tabriz remained with the Safavids. The extradition clause, for its part, would be put directly to the test a few years later when Şehzade Bayezid took refuge in Iran.

The Religious and Political Dimension

An important strand of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict was the sectarian tension between the Sunni Ottoman order and the Qizilbash Safavid order. For this reason the expectation that tabarra would be banned holds a weighty place in the treaty. Some sources define this provision as ending the official cursing of Abu Bakr and Umar out of deference to the Sunni Ottomans. The provision on the pilgrimage route was also the most concrete point of agreement between the two states; the passage of Iranian pilgrims through Ottoman lands reopened a road that had in practice been closed in wartime. That the gift valued most highly among the shah's presents was a copy of the Qur'an also suggests that the Safavid side answered this religious emphasis in the language of gifts.

Two Rulers

On the two sides of the negotiation stood two rulers of different ages and temperaments. Tahmasp's year of birth is given in the sources as 1514; another record, however, relying on his own statement, gives 26 Dhu al-Hijjah 920, that is, 10 February 1515. He had come to the throne on 23 May 1524, when he was only ten, on the death of his father Shah Ismail, and remained in the hands of the Qizilbash emirs until he came of age. The first years of his reign were shaped by power struggles among the Qizilbash tribes and by pressure from the Uzbeks in the east and the Ottomans in the west. The sources present him as a ruler meticulous in financial matters to the point of stinginess, pious and melancholy. His preferred method against the Ottoman army was to avoid direct confrontation. Süleyman, on the other hand, was a sultan approaching sixty, carrying the weariness of a reign of nearly thirty-five years and struggling with gout. Busbecq describes him at that time as sixty years old, frugal and temperate since his youth, and deeply devoted to his religion. He is known to have written poetry under the pen name Muhibbî and to have patronized poets. The two rulers never saw each other; everything was conducted through envoys and letters.

Leaving Amasya

Once peace had been secured, the crowd in the city began to disperse. The Habsburg delegation did not obtain the result the Iranians had; Busbecq secured only a six-month truce, valid until he could bring back his king's reply. The pashas did not think it advisable for him to remain as resident ambassador and decided to send him back with the sultan's letter to Ferdinand, wrapped in cloth of gold. At his farewell audience Busbecq was dressed in two heavy embroidered robes that reached to his ankles. He was not, however, given the farewell meal in the council that was customary for friends, because relations between the two states were not yet amicable. The ambassador left Amasya on 2 June.

According to Busbecq's record, the Iranian envoy left the city on the same day, and the two delegations set out together on the single road leading out of Amasya. The road soon divided in two: the Iranians took the branch going east, the Habsburg delegation the branch going west. In the open country around the city the Ottoman camp, with its many tents, was still pitched. Busbecq, setting out in the June heat, writes that he suffered from a fever that recurred every day until he reached Istanbul.

The sultan himself waited a little longer. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Süleyman set out from Amasya for Istanbul with his viziers on the first day of Sha'ban 962, that is, in the last days of June 1555. He took with him some of the city's scholars and poets. Among them were the scholars Koca Hüsâmeddîn and Abdîzâde Hasan Efendi, the poets Edâyî, Çakal Kadızâde Sinan Bey and Tâczâde Mehmed Çelebi, and Gülâbî Agha, steward of the palace gatekeepers. The sanjak governor Kaya Bey also went with the sultan and was promoted; Mahmud Bey, son of Fenârîzâde Şemsi Bey, who had served as army treasurer, was appointed governor of Amasya. Hüsâmeddîn does not name the treaty in this section; he says only that the envoy "pleaded for peace," that his request was granted, and that the troops were discharged.

After Amasya

Süleyman returned to Istanbul on 31 July 1555. By then a man claiming to be Şehzade Mustafa had appeared in Rumelia; the sultan had him captured and executed in Istanbul. The place and details of the episode are told differently in the sources. Some studies write that the false Mustafa appeared around Salonica, whereas Busbecq says he emerged in the Thracian lands north of Istanbul, stretching toward the Danube, Moldavia and Wallachia. According to Busbecq, the man was bold and quick-witted and resembled Mustafa in build and features. He gathered followers by claiming that he had sent a look-alike into his father's presence in his place and that it was the look-alike who had been killed. The sultan rebuked his sanjak governors and sent the vizier Pertev Pasha against him; the crowd dispersed, and the false prince was captured and brought to Istanbul. Busbecq writes that under interrogation it emerged that Şehzade Bayezid was behind him, and that the man was thrown into the sea at midnight together with his accomplices.

After the execution of Kara Ahmed Pasha, Rüstem Pasha became grand vizier again on 29 September 1555. Uzunçarşılı writes that Hürrem Sultan and her daughter Mihrimah Sultan incited the aging sultan against Kara Ahmed Pasha in order to bring Rüstem Pasha back to the grand vizierate. Hüsâmeddîn places this execution in Dhu al-Qa'dah of the year 962. The sultan no longer felt he had the strength to lead a new military campaign in person. The peace at Amasya was therefore not merely an outcome Tahmasp desired. It also suited the Ottoman government's wish to lighten its burden on the eastern front.

The Life of the Peace and Its Aftermath

The Peace of Amasya remained in force for about twenty-five years, until Ismail II came to the throne after the death of Shah Tahmasp. Some accounts give the length of the peace as about twenty years and its end as 1578. According to another assessment, the peace was kept by both sides until Tahmasp's death in 1576 (984); the turmoil that broke out in Iran after the shah's death led the Ottomans to occupy the Caucasian lands claimed by both countries. During the peace the Ottoman State was able to turn its attention once again to the West, the Mediterranean and the Hungarian front. On the Safavid side, the western provinces worn down by war found the opportunity to recover. Some studies note that the peace helped economic and commercial development in both countries, that agriculture and economic life revived in Safavid lands, and that both rulers made efforts to preserve the peace. Tahmasp, too, once the Ottoman frontier was secured, turned toward Georgia and took a great many captives and much booty.

The peace was also tested by the struggle for the throne among Süleyman's sons. According to Hüsâmeddîn, because of the rivalry between the two princes, in the Hijri year 965 (1557-1558) Bayezid was given the sanjak of Amasya and Selim that of Konya; thus Amasya became a princely sanjak again only a few years after the peace was concluded there. When Bayezid rebelled against his father and fled from Amasya to the Safavids, relations between the two states grew tense; but with Bayezid's surrender to the Ottomans in 1559 the peace was not broken, and it continued through the reigns of Selim II and Murad III.

The Peace of Amasya did not settle the frontier question definitively. The clear demarcation of the Caucasian borders and full acceptance of Ottoman control over Mesopotamia came only with the Treaty of Kasr-ı Şirin (Zuhab), signed in 1639. Under that treaty the region of Baghdad, Basra and Shahrizor, known as Arab Iraq, remained with the Ottomans, while Yerevan was left to the Safavids. In the following centuries frontier issues were mostly resolved on the basis of that treaty. Amasya, as the place where the first treaty between the Ottomans and Iran was made, formed the first step in relations between the two states.

What the Treaty Meant for Amasya

The treaty carries the city's place in classical Ottoman history beyond its identity as a princely sanjak. In the winter of 1554-1555 Amasya was Süleyman's headquarters and the council chamber where envoys were received; Safavid, French and Habsburg ambassadors met the sultan in this city. For the townspeople these months passed with a year's remission of taxes and the sultan's favors; some of Amasya's scholars and poets went to Istanbul in the sultan's retinue. That the name of Amasya stands beside Constantinople in the Latin title of Busbecq's first letter shows that this winter also made the city known to European readers. The Şehnâme-i Âl-i Osmân by Arifî Fethullah Çelebi contains a miniature depicting Süleyman's reception of the Safavid envoy. This image shows that the event was also recorded in the court circles of the time as a significant diplomatic development.

Chronology

1514: Battle of Chaldiran; the beginning of the Ottoman-Safavid rivalry.

1533-1535: Süleyman's Campaign of the Two Iraqs.

1548: Tahmasp moves his capital from Tabriz to Qazvin.

1548-1549: Second Iranian campaign.

1552-1553: Tahmasp's raids in Eastern Anatolia.

28 August 1553: Süleyman leaves Istanbul on the Nakhchivan Campaign.

5 October 1553: Şehzade Mustafa is executed near Ereğli in the province of Konya.

27 November 1553: Şehzade Cihangir dies in Aleppo.

July 1554: Yerevan and Nakhchivan are laid waste.

6 August 1554: The first Safavid peace offer reaches the Ottoman camp near Doğubayazıt.

26 September 1554: Süleyman accepts Tahmasp's request for a truce.

30 October 1554: Süleyman returns to Amasya and winters there.

7 April 1555: The Habsburg ambassador Busbecq reaches Amasya.

10 or 17 May 1555: Ferruhzade Bey reaches Amasya.

22 May 1555: The envoy is received in the council.

1 June 1555 (11 Rajab 962): The letter setting out the terms of the treaty is handed to the envoy.

2 June 1555: Busbecq and the Safavid envoy leave Amasya.

Late June 1555 (1 Sha'ban 962): Süleyman sets out from Amasya for Istanbul.

31 July 1555: Süleyman returns to Istanbul.

29 September 1555: Rüstem Pasha becomes grand vizier again.

1559: Şehzade Bayezid is handed over to the Ottomans.

1576: Shah Tahmasp dies.

1639: Treaty of Kasr-ı Şirin (Zuhab).

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 3, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, pp. 309-316 (e-book 1-4, pp. 508-510). amasya.bel.tr

Academic studies

  • İ. Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, "Şehzade Mustafa'nın Ölümünde Medhali Olan Vezir-i Âzam Rüstem Paşa'nın İkinci Sadaretinde Yeniçerilerin Ağalarından Şikâyeti Havi Kanuni Sultan Süleyman ile Rüstem Paşa'ya Pek Ağır Mektupları", Belleten, vol. XXXI.

Official sources

  • A. Ekber Diyanet, İlk Osmanlı-İran Anlaşması, 1555 Amasya Musalahası, Istanbul 1971.

Books

  • Enver Ziya Karal, İ. Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Büyük Osmanlı Tarihi, vol. 3, Sabah Yayınları, 2001.

Other sources

  • İlhan Şahin, Feridun Emecen, "Amasya Antlaşması", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, Istanbul 1991, pp. 4-5. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Süleyman I", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • "Tahmasb", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • Rhoads Murphey, "Kasrışîrin Antlaşması", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • Markus Köhbach, "Amasya, Peace of", Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. I, fasc. 9, p. 928 (1989).
  • O. G. de Busbecq, Türk Mektupları, trans. Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, Istanbul 1939, pp. 78-88.
  • A. G. Busbequius, Travels into Turkey, London 1744 (Project Gutenberg edition). gutenberg.org
  • "The Busbecq Letters", AramcoWorld, vol. 66, no. 2, March-April 2015. archive.aramcoworld.com
  • "Şah I. Tahmasb (1524-1576)", Ankara University Open Course Materials, lecture notes. acikders.ankara.edu.tr

Online sources